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Biophys J, August 1999, p. 853-864, Vol. 77, No. 2

Direct Measures of Large, Anisotropic Strains in Deformation of the Erythrocyte Cytoskeleton

James C-M. Lee,* Derek T. Wong,# and Dennis E. Discher*#§

Institute for Medicine and Engineering, Departments of  *Chemical,  §Mechanical, and  #Bio-Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

The erythrocyte's spectrin-actin membrane skeleton is directly shown to be capable of sustaining large, anisotropic strains. Photobleaching of an ~1-µm stripe in rhodamine phalloidin-labeled actin appears stable up to at least 37°C, and is used to demonstrate large in-surface stretching during elastic deformation of the skeleton. Principal extension or stretch ratios of at least ~200% and contractions down to ~40%, both referenced to an essentially undistorted cell, are visually demonstrated in micropipette-imposed deformation. Such anisotropic straining is seen to be consistent at a qualitative level with now classic analyses (Evans. 1973. Biophys. J. 13:941-954) and is generally nonhomogeneous though axisymmetric down to the submicron scale. Local, direct measurements of stretching prove quantitatively consistent (within ~10%) with integrated estimates that are based simply on a measured relative density distribution of actin. The measurements are also in close agreement with direct computation of mean spectrin chain extension in full statistical mechanical simulations of a coarse-grained network held in a micropipette. Finally, as a cell thermally fragments near ~48°C, the patterned photobleaching demonstrates a destructuring of the surface network in a process that is more readily attributable to transitions in spectrin than in F-actin.

Biophys J, August 1999, p. 853-864, Vol. 77, No. 2
© 1999 by the Biophysical Society   0006-3495/99/08/853/12  $2.00


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